Ferrule

Ferrule (pronounced fer-uhl or fer-ool)

(1) A ring or cap, traditionally of metal, put around the end of a post, cane, or the like, to prevent splitting.

(2) A short (still usually metal) sleeve for strengthening a tool handle at the end holding the tool.

(3) In engineering, a bushing or adapter holding the end of a tube and inserted into a hole in a plate in order to make a tight fit, used in boilers, condensers etc.

(4) In engineering, a bush, gland, small length of tube etc, especially one used for making a joint.

(5) In electrical engineering, a band crimped as part of a cable terminal.

(6) In bladesmithing, a fitting (often of brass) where the blade joins to the handle.

(7) A short ring for reinforcing or decreasing the interior diameter of the end of a tube.

(8) A short plumbing fitting, covered at its outer end and caulked or otherwise fixed to a branch from a pipe so that it can be removed to give access to the interior of the pipe.

(9) In angling, (1) either of two fittings on the end of a section of a sectional fishing rod, one fitting serving as a plug and the other as a socket for fastening the sections together or (2) one of two or more small rings spaced along the top of a casting rod to hold and guide the line.

(10) In mountaineering, the metal spike at the end of the shaft of an ice axe.

(11) In billiards, the plastic band attaching the tip to the cue.

(12) The pinched metal band which holds the bristles of a paintbrush.

(13) The pinched metal band which holds in place on the shaft the eraser of a pencil.

(14) To furnish or equip a device with a ferrule.

1605-1615: From the Middle English verel, virel, virole (ferrule; metal pivot on the end of an axle), altered under the influence of the Latin ferrum (iron), from the Old French virole (ferrule; collar), from the Latin viriola (little bracelet), diminutive of viria (bracelet worn by men) (influenced by the Latin ferrum (iron)), from the Gaulish, from the Proto-Celtic weiros (crooked) (which may be compared with the Middle Irish fiar (bent, crooked), the Welsh gŵyr and the Breton gwar (curved)), from the primitive Indo-European weyhros (threaded, turned, twisted), from weyh- (to turn, twist, weave).  The alternative spelling is ferule.  Ferrule is a noun and ferruled is a verb & adjective and ferruling is a verb; the noun plural is ferrules.

Comrade Stalin (left), diagram of an ice axe (centre) and comrade Trotsky (right).

Comrade Leon Trotsky (1879-1940; founder of the Fourth International) in The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? (1936) had a feeling for the political phrase and labelled the state created by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) a “Soviet Thermidor” because although Tsarist era capitalism wasn’t re-created (a la the monarchy in France not being restored in the 1790s), the combination of a bureaucracy supporting a personality cult (even if the latter was in 1936 still somewhat disguised) was “a counterrevolutionary regression” which betrayed what was achieved by comrade Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924; head of government of Russia or Soviet Union 1917-1924).  The phrase caught the imagination of many, notably those in the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (The POUM, the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), a non-communist Marxist party (a surprisingly populated fork of left-wing thought) which comrade Stalin correctly associated with Trotskyism.  The POUM was highly productive in thought but drifted increasingly far from the moorings of political reality although rhetoric which included polemics like “Stalinist Thermidorians have established in Russia the bureaucratic regime of a poisoned dictator.”  Agents of the Narodný komissariat vnutrennih del (NKVD, The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs and one of the many predecessors to the KGB), answerable only to comrade Stalin, killed dozens of POUM’s Central Committee which ended the organization’s effectiveness for a generation. In his prodigious memory, comrade Stalin filed away annoying phrases and in 1940 he had comrade Trotsky murdered in Mexico.  The murder weapon was an ice-axe.  Ferrules are used on ice-axes as to absorb and distribute stresses, reducing the tendency of the timber handles to split or fragment.

The ferrule also played a role in the assassination by the Bulgarian Secret Service of comrade Georgi Ivanov Markov (1929–1978), a troublesome dissident writer who had annoyed the communist regime in the People's Republic of Bulgaria.  In 1969, comrade Markov defected to the West and gained political asylum in England where, based in London, he worked as a journalist and broadcaster for the BBC World Service, the US-funded Radio Free Europe and West Germany's Deutsche Welle.  On these platforms, his critique of the ruling party in Sofia became increasingly vitriolic which-obviously, annoyed the politburo even more.  Accordingly, they arranged his murder and the weapon was that ubiquitous feature of London life: the umbrella.

Replica of “Umbrella gun” produced by the KGB’s Moscow laboratory, 1978, International museum of spying.

The Soviet Union’s (USSR) KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti), which translates literally at the “Committee for State Security” is better understood as “political secret police”.  It was the last of an alphabet-soup of similar agencies (Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB, NKVD, SMERSH & MGB) which, building on the models of the many secret police forces maintained by Tsarist Russia (1547-1917), was responsible for the USSR’s internal security and beyond its borders, espionage, counter espionage and a range of activities conducted in support of Soviet foreign policy (including that not disclosed and that sometimes denied).  In post-Soviet Russia, the KGB evolved into the Federal Security Service (FSB), comrade Vladimir Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) honing his skills in the institution he apparently joined in 1975.

Mean Girls themed pencils, the ferrule securing the eraser.

The “umbrella gun” used a hollow ferrule which housed a tiny (1.7 mm (.067 inch) in diameter), discharge triggered by a button on the handle used usually to raise the canopy.  Spring-loaded and powered from a small cylinder of compressed air, the pellet was projected at sufficient velocity to penetrate the victim’s clothing & skin and as soon as it became lodged, it began to warm; that was significant because a substance covering two holes in the pellet began melt at body temperature, releasing the poison.  It’s never been clear what the poison was but most authorities suspect it was probably Ricin, a highly potent toxin produced in the seeds of the castor oil plant.

Cognac

Cognac (pronounced kohn-yak, or kaw-nyak (French))

(1) The brandy distilled in and shipped from the legally delimited area surrounding the town of Cognac, in western-central France (often with initial capital letters).

(2) Any French brandy (now technically incorrect since passage of various laws and WTO rules).

(3) Any expensive brandy (also incorrect).

(4) A town in south-west France famed for the brandy distilled from grapes grown in the region.

(5) A descriptor used for a range of brown shades from earthy to reddish-brown.

1585-1595: Borrowed from French Coniacke, (wine produced in Cognac region of western France), cognac’s origin was as a distilling of an otherwise unsaleable white wine.  The term Cognac brandy was in use as early as the 1680s and the sense of it being “a superior brandy” dates from 1755.  The city's name is from Medieval Latin Comniacum, from the personal name Cominius + the Gallo-Roman suffix -acum (from -aceus (indicating a resemblance). Cominius is an old Italic family name.

James Suckling 100 points crystal cognac glass from Lalique.

Although the traditional balloon glass was long associated with brandy and cognac, the distillers now advise the best choice is actually a “tulip” glass because it permits the aromas better to waft to the nose.  That's the most important part in enjoying Cognac; it's not so much drunk as breathed in, consumed mostly by a mere moistening of the lips while slowly but deeply inhaling; a nip of cognac can last a long time.  Enjoyed thus, it really should be taken neat.  

Named after the town of Cognac, France and known within the trade also as eau de vie, cognac is a brandy produced in any of the designated growing regions approved by the Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac (BNIC).  In a pleasing irony, it’s distilled from an extremely dry, thin and acidic white wine thought undrinkable and unsuitable even for cooking yet which is ideal for distilling.  Grand Marnier, the cognac-based liqueur, from the French grand (great) + Marnier-Lapostolle (name of the manufacturer) was first sold in 1901.

Although the BNIC is the body which writes the rules and controls production, the industry is regulated under the French Appellation d'origine contrôlée which codifies all regulations including the naming requirements.  One linguistic curiosities of the quintessentially French business of cognac business is the official grades (XO, VSOP etc) are in English because they were standardised in the eighteenth century when the trade was dominated by the British, even before Pax Britannia’s control of the sea lanes.  The BNIC’s categories are:

VS (Very Special), denoted usually by the three stars (☆☆☆) on the label, VS designates a blend in which the youngest brandy has been cask-aged for a minimum of two years.

VSOP (Very Superior Old Pale), still often (though now less frequently) called Reserve, designates a blend in which the youngest has been cask-aged for a minimum of two years.  VSOP is sometimes incorrectly cited as Very Special Old Port or Very Special Over Proof.

Napoléon designates a blend in which the youngest brandy has been cask-aged for a minimum of six years.  Although long used as a marketing term (often as a synonym for XO), Napoléon was never part of the official naming system of Cognacs, appearing only in recent years, when, as a transitional arrangement due to stocks not being sufficient to permit implementation of a change in the rule governing use of the XO label, it was used specifically to denote those blends which, while aged the requisite six years, did not in other ways conform with the revised XO specifications.  Slated originally for introduction in 2016, the revised rules were instead gazetted in 2018.

XO (Extra Old), designates a blend in which the youngest brandy has been cask-aged for a minimum of ten years.

XXO (Extra Extra Old), designates a blend in which the youngest brandy has been cask-aged for a minimum of fourteen years.

Hors d'âge (Beyond Age), designates a blend, at least functionally equivalent to XO, but is applied by distillers to a cognac with some special characteristics which distinguish it in some way.

The naming conventions aren’t as old as the spirit.  When first produced from un-aged distilled grape wine from the Charente in the early 1600s, there was no system of ageing designations and it was sold simply as brandy, or, from the 1680s, Cognac brandy.  By century’s end however, the wine houses began storing the brandy in barrels of oak and to distinguish the aged product, this was called “old”, the un-aged, “young”.  The now familiar, hierarchical naming regime for the oak-aged spirit didn't begin until a batch called VSOP (Very Special Old Pale) was bottled for the Prince of Wales (George Augustus Frederick, 1762–1830; King George IV of Great Britain 1820-1830).

Lindsay Lohan color-co-ordinated in cognac (hair, eyes, outfit & nails), Christian Siriano Spring 2023 Collection Show, New York Fashion Week, February 2023.

The French wine industry was little-regulated until the phylloxera (a type of aphid) crisis of the mid-nineteenth century induced the government in 1888 to create the Viticulture Committee with a remit which grew gradually from disease control to encompass other regulatory aspects of the industry.  One concern was the widespread counterfeiting of cognac and in 1909 a decree was issued which defined the “Cognac” appellation area as the eight Cognac vintages named in a map based upon the work of geologist and paleontologist Henri Coquand (1813-1881).  It’s that map which remains the basis of the rule that cognac can only be produced within a delimited geographical area, defined by the 1909 decree which meant the “Cognac”, “Eau-de-vie de Cognac”, and “Eau-de-vie des Charentes” appellations are restricted exclusively to wine spirits grown and distilled within the defined regions of Charente-Maritime and Charente, as well as several villages in the Dordogne and Deux-Sèvres departments.

Later, the regulatory body was the National Bureau of Distribution of Cognac Wines and Eaux (NBDCWE) which in 1936 defined the conditions for the production of eaux-de-vie giving rise to the “cognac” appellation and two years later re-defined the appellation area, commune by commune, vintage by vintage.  The 1936 ruling outlined the requirements for distilled wine or brandy to be considered Cognac, mandating (1) the product must originate in the Cognac Appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) mapped that year, (2) that the grapes used to make cognac must come from one of the six designated growing areas (crus) located in the Cognac region (the six crus including  Borderies, Fins Bois, Bons Bois and Bois Ordinaires, Bois à terroirs, Grande Champagne and Petite Champagne), (3) that the grapes must come from one of the six approved appellations and (4), the cognac must be made from grapes blended from 90% eau de vie from Ugni Blanc, Folle Blanche and Colombard grapes with up to 10% Folignan, Jurancon blanc, Blanc Rame, Montils or Semillon grapes.

The NBDCWE was in 1946 replaced by the NIBC and in 1983 it formalized the long-established designations used to classify cognacs by age.  The designations are determined by the youngest eau-de-vie blended in the Cognac, thus nothing may be represented as cognac unless it has been aged at least two years (the VS (Very Special standard)).  The distillers may sell younger eau-de-vie as brandy (for example Rémy Martin’s Rémy V) but not labelled as cognac.  The point of the designations being based on the youngest part of the blend is significant in that a VS cognac may contain a proportion of much older eau-de-vie.  It’s for that reason some cognacs are sold without an official designation attached, if it’s thought by the house the label might confuse or inaccurately portray nature of the blend.  Rémy Martin’s 1738 Royal Accord by contains eau-de-vie aged between four & twenty years and thus, technically, is a VSOP but the house chose to forego a designation because it would tend to undersell the value of blend which included eaux-de-vie aged up to twenty years.

Most expensive: Henri IV Dudognon Heritage Cognac Grande Champagne.  Listed at almost US$2 million, it’s bottled in crystal which is dipped in 24-karat gold and Sterling platinum with 6,500 certified cut diamonds as decoration.  Said now to be aimed at the Middle-East market since the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) Politburo cracked down on such extravagances, it’s assumed not many mix this with Coca-Cola.

Highly regarded: Remy Martin’s Louis XIII Grande Champagne Très Vieille Age Inconnu (pre-1950).  There was an official price list on which this appeared but, because of limited supply, it’s really only indicative and most sell at auction, the highest known paid for a decanter thought to be the US$44,630 achieved in a private Hong Kong sale in 2013.

Most fancy box: Camus Cuvee 5.150.  Camus use a sequential numbering system for their more interesting releases, the 5.150 the fifth release in their master collection which marked the company’s sesquicentenary (150 years).  With production limited to a run of 1,482, thoughtfully the crystal decanter was supplied with a brace of tasting glasses, presumably to dissuade those buyers tempted to drink straight from the bottle.  According to Camus, the 5.150 is a blend of five distinct and rare eaux-de-vie from five different regions and is unique in the history of cognac.  A bottle was listed at US$13,500.

Most interesting choice of packaging materials: Hennessy Beaute du Siecle Cognac.  Unusually in an industry which tends to favor creations made from precious metals and stones when packaging its more extravagant products, Hennessy’s most expensive cognac comes in a one litre bottle and a container styled in the manner of an art deco jewel-box, rendered in aluminum and bronze.  Limited to an edition of one-hundred and priced at US$194,927, the designer was French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel (b 1964).

Most expensive by the glass: Croizet Cognac Leonie 1858. General Eisenhower is said on the eve of the D-Day landings in 1944 to have shared a couple of nips of the 1858 with Winston Churchill, the bottle liberated from somewhere.  One sold at auction in 2011 for US$156,760 but for a more manageable US$8,764, it’s available by the glass (a 40 ml (1.3 oz) nip) at the InterContinental in Hong Kong.  Founded in 1805, Croizet is one of the older cognac houses and bottles only single vintages, a rarity in the industry but not even they can replicate the original.  It was distilled with grapes picked from vines with a lineage back to those planted by Julius Caesar’s armies in 55 BC and is the only cognac of its kind left because the vines were destroyed in the great phylloxera crisis of the 1870s.  At US$8,764 a nip, supply is dwindling slowly but, once gone, that’s it.  To encourage consumption, the InterContinental Hong Kong’s Lobby Lounge uses it in what’s claimed to be the world’s most expensive cocktail, the US$13,919 Winston which includes also Grand Marnier, Chartreuse VEP and Angostura bitters.  Better value for money is probably the hotel’s VVIP Presidential Suite Cognac Croizet Experience which, for US$166,117, includes a two-night stay in the Presidential Suite, a bottle of the 1858, a paired menu created by their Executive Chef and exclusive access to the Cognac Croizet vineyards for up to four people in Charentes, near Bordeaux.  During the one-night stay, there's a tour of the estate, gourmet dining and a cognac-blending tutorial from the cellar master.

Best value: Frapin Château Fontpinot XO. It tends to retail around US$175 (US$2000 a dozen)) and is one of the most rewarding XO blends.  Although many treat the language of wine tasting with some derision, just inhaling the vapors of the Fontpinot XO really does  summon thoughts of dark chocolate, still juicy dried fruit, warm caramel and herbs.  There are many more expensive cognacs with a similar taste but few match the endless aromatics of this one.  It’s a economical purchase too because one tends to neglect drinking, just to longer enjoy breathing it in.

Oldest vintage sold at auction: Gautier Cognac 1762.  In 2020, a bottle of Gautier Cognac 1762, the largest of the three known still to exist, was sold by Sotheby’s for US$144,525.  In 1762, Britain was entering the Seven Years’ War, Catherine II was empress of Russia, Mozart was six years old and George Washington had just turned thirty.  Cognac remains cheap by auction standards, the record price achieved by wine being the US$558,000 realized by a 1945 Romanee-Conti while ancient bottles of single-malt Scotch whisky have sold for almost US$2 million.  The new owner was described only as “an Asian private collector” and Sotheby’s added the buyer would get to “enjoy a bespoke experience at Maison Gautier, courtesy of the distillery” as part of his winning bid.

The future of the contents isn’t known but the auction house claimed, though some two-hundred and sixty years on, it should still be drinkable.  Their expert revealed the opinion is based on (1) the ullage (level of liquid inside) which was high, suggesting that the seal had not been compromised so evaporation was thus minimal and (2) a pleasing OBE (old bottle effect), the quality of which is determined by whether it imparts either a pleasant “tropical” note or the less appealing “porridge-y” sound.  He did add however that because glass isn’t entirely inert, it would have imparted some flavor of its own.  That notwithstanding, he suspected the depth of flavor from grapes grown on ancient root stock could give the spirit a complexity different from that known in the modern era.

Stack

Stack (pronounced stak)

(1) A more or less orderly pile or heap.

(2) A set of shelves for books or other materials ranged compactly one above the other, as in a library.

(3) As smoke-stack, a number of chimneys or flues grouped together (and used originally to describe an especially tall structure).

(4) A vertical duct for conveying warm air from a leader to a register on an upper story of a building.

(5) A vertical waste pipe or vent pipe serving a number of floors.

(6) In informal use, a great quantity or number.

(7) In radio, an antenna consisting of a number of components connected in a substantially vertical series.

(8) In computing, a linear list arranged so that the last item stored is the first item retrieved and an area in a memory for temporary storage

(9) In military jargon, a conical, free-standing group of three rifles placed on their butts and hooked together with stacking swivels.

(10) In air traffic control, as air stack or stack-up, groups of airplanes flying nearly circular patterns at various altitudes over an airport where crowded runways, a low cloud ceiling, or other temporary conditions prevent immediate landings.

(11) In historic English measure for coal and wood, equal to 106 cubic feet (3m³).

(12) In geology, a column of rock isolated from a shore by the action of waves.

(13) In poker and some other games, the quantity of chips held by a player at a given point in a gambling game.

(14) To arrange or select unfairly in order to force a desired result, especially to load (a jury, committee, etc.) with members having a biased viewpoint.

(15) In Australian slang, to crash (typically a bike, skateboard etc).

(16) In recreational drugs as "stacked pill", a dose (most associated with MDMA) with an external coating in several (stacked) colors.

1250–1300: From the Middle English stak (pile, heap or group of things) from a Scandinavian source akin to the Old Norse stakkr (haystack), thought to be from the Proto-Germanic stakkoz & stakon- (a stake), from the primitive Indo-European stog-, a variant of steg (pole; stick (source of the English "stake")), the source also of the Old Church Slavonic stogu (heap), the Russian stog (haystack) and the Lithuanian stokas (pillar).  It was cognate with the Danish stak and the Swedish stack (heap, stack).

Noted stackers, same cause; different effect: Liz Truss & Xi Jinping with their predecessors.

Especially in politics, the idea of loading the membership of some body (a committee, a branch meeting etc) so that votes may be controlled is an ancient (if not noble) practice but it wasn't described as "stacking" until the early twentieth century.  In some jurisdictions, the practice of "branch stacking" (paying for people to enroll in a political party, many of whom may not be aware of their involvement) has been made unlawful but the technique seems still widespread.  Recent examples at the more exalted level of executive government include Liz Truss (b 1975; UK prime-minister for a few weeks in 2022) who stacked her infamously brief administration exclusively with her supporters regardless of their talent and Xi Jinping (b 1953; paramount leader of the People's Republic of China since 2012) who, when re-structuring the seven member Standing Committee of the Politburo after securing a third term in office, ensured no dissenting voices were likely to be heard.  This worked out not well for Ms Truss; Mr Xi expects better things. 

Stacked: Lindsay Lohan photographed in a pleasing aspect.

Stack in the sense of Australian slang (often as "stacked it") means "to crash" in some way, typically from a skateboard, scooter or bike and (to clarify things) the word was memorably used by #metoo campaigner Grace Tame to explain an injury sustained just after she'd upset the ruling Liberal party.  In the sub-culture of recreational drugs, "stacked pills" are those with a layered color scheme suggesting some interesting variation of ingredients (although all the evidence suggests the finish is purely decorative); among the MDMA crowd "stacked disco biscuits" were said to be a 1990s favorite.  As applied to the (noun) shelves in libraries upon which books are (verb) stacked, use dates from 1879 and as a description of the chimneys of factories, locomotives etc it came into use in the mid-1820s.  The use in computing (the best known of which is probably the IP (Internet Protocol) stack)) dates from 1960 when the word was use to describe software consisting two or more components, the loading of which is dependent on an earlier part, hence the idea of layers which stack upon each-other.  As a modifier it was used to describe the haystack in the mid-fifteenth century and in industrial architecture the smoke-stack (a very tall factory chimney) dates from the mid 1820s (although the structures pre-date the use).  The use of smoke-stack was later picked up by naval architects and was applied also to steam locomotives although these exhausts weren't disproportionately tall.  The verb stack emerged in early fourteenth century agriculture in the sense of "to pile up the grain into a stack" and was thus directly from the noun.  Perhaps surprisingly, the adjectival use of stacked appears undocumented until 1796 when it was used as a past participle to describe the clusters of hay assembled at harvest but etymologists suspect it had long been in oral use.  The adjectival use of stacked to suggest a woman who is pleasingly (even perhaps slightly disproportionately) curvaceous dates from 1942.

Of DeSoto's triple stack

1957 DeSoto Adventurer Convertible.

DeSoto's signature triple stacked taillights were a footnote in Detroit's macropterous era of the late 1950s, the style making possible the distinctive vertical arrangement.  Chevrolet would for years make triple taillights a trademark of their more expensive lines (although, apart from the odd special built for the show circuit, they resisted the temptation to add a third to the Corvette (the additional rear apertures on the abortive 1963 Corvette Grand Sport (GS) were for air extraction)) but they appeared always in a less memorable horizontal array.  DeSoto's motif was Chrysler's most successful use of the fins but it wasn't enough to save the brand  which was crowded out of the mid-priced market, not only by competition from General Motors (GM) and Ford but also by intra-corporate cannibalization, squeezed from below by Dodge and from above by Chrysler's new Newport line.  Demand for DeSotos collapsed and that so many were built in 1960 was simply to use up the large inventory of the few parts still exclusive to the brand.  The last of the line, heavily discounted, were not sold until well into 1961.

More sharing of stuff than before: 1960 DeSoto Fireflite four-door hardtop (left) and 1960 Chrysler New Yorker four-door hardtop (right).

By 1959 the writing was on the wall for the once popular DeSoto and the 1960 range would prove its swansong, the last of the breed barely modified Chryslers and the only real hint of the past was the taillight's triple frets.  On the DeSoto the ridges were a modest attempt to retain brand identity but in optics such things have a purpose and are known as “Fresnel lenses” or “Fresnel ribs”, the name from French civil engineer Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788–1827), remembered for his research into optics which led eventually to the near-unanimous acceptance of the nature of light being a wave (he was half-right but light was later proved to possess a wave-particle duality).  His more enduring Fresnel lens used the catadioptric (reflective/refractive) principle and what the “stepped” design did was extend the reach of lighthouse beams, doubtlessly saving the lives of many seafarers.  Fresnel’s invention was a refinement of the dioptric (refractive) stepped lens, a concept first published by the French cosmologist and mathematician Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) and Fresnel’s enhancements better distributed and directed the light, improving visibility from longer distances and a greater range of angles.

By 1960 (left) the DeSoto's taillights were a shadow of the way the triple-stack motif had been defined in 1959 (right): This juxtaposition is DeSoto Red Tail Lights in Black and White by Paul Ward.  Many designers probably will prefer the later interpretation but there's a charm to the triple stack.

Open stack exhausts

The exhaust systems of most internal combustion engines are designed to allow as efficient an operation as possible over a broad range of engine speeds while performing as quietly as is required.  Unlike engines used on the road, those designed for competition aren’t as compromised by the need for a wide powerband and quiet operation so open stack exhausts, optimized for flow and the reduction of back-pressure, are attractive.

Stacked: BRM P57 in its original configuration.

During the 1950s, despite engine capacity having being reduced from 4.5 (275 cubic inch) to 2.5 (153 cubic inch) litres, speeds in Formula One were increasing so the sport’s governing body (then the  Commission Sportive Internationale (CSI)), a crew almost as dopey about such things as the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) are now), reacted by imposing a further reduction to 1.5 litres (92 cubic inch).  The 1.5 litre formula ran between 1961 and 1965 but came under increasing criticism as being unworthy of Formula One status in an age when big-engined machinery in other categories was attracting such interest.  The rules did however compel designers and engineers to conjure up some exquisite voiturettes.  BRM’s jewel-like 1.5 litre V8 was the first since the one-off Mercedes-Benz W165 built for the 1939 Tripoli Grand Prix and proved successful, winning the 1962 drivers’ and constructors’ championships.  To extract the maximum from the tiny V8, BRM initially ran them with eight, slightly angled, open-stack exhaust headers which were effective but, because of the limits of the metallurgy of the era they were prone to working loose so, with only the slightest sacrifice in top-end power, during 1962 an orthodox horizontal system was fabricated as a replacement.

Stacked: Graham Hill, 14^th BRDC (British Racing Drivers Club) International Trophy, Silverstone, 12 May 1962.

BRM's chassis for the 1.5 litre formula was actually ready before the new (P56) V8 so in 1961 it was fitted with the widely-used four cylinder Coventry Climax unit which proved uncompetitive against the various configurations of the V6 used in the Ferrari 156 F1 (the "sharknose").  Confusingly, in its debut season, BRM labelled the car the P48/P57 while in 1962 the official name was P578; subsequently just about everybody called the thing the P57 and although lacking the charisma of the earlier and later sixteen cylinder cars it was the factory's most successful engine/chassis combination and wasn't replaced until 1964, one private team even (without success) campaigning the P57 into 1965.

Destacked: Graham Hill, 1962 South African Grand Prix, East London, 29 December 1962.  While the more tightly regulated forms of circuit racing (mostly) restricted the use of open-stack exhausts, in more permissive places (notably the wildly modified "Sports Racing Closed" and "Allcomer" competitions in Australia and New Zealand) the protuberant pipes lasted longer.

Politburo

Politburo (pronounced pol-it-byoor-oh or poh-lit-byoor-oh)

(1) The executive committee and chief policymaking body of a Communist Party (often in lowercase).  In the English-speaking world, sometimes erroneously written as politbureau or in hyphenated form.

(2) A casual term for a senior policymaking body in a political organisation, generally consisting of members who either are appointed by the party in control of the organisation or who attain membership through their personal political affiliations (sometimes derogatory).

1917: From the Russian Политбюро́ (Politbjuró) as shortening of полити́ческое бюро́ (politícheskoe byuró) (political bureau).  As a general principle, a politburo, in general, is the chief committee of a communist party and often exercises executive authority. The German form is Politisches Büro abbreviated as Politbüro and, like the Spanish Politburó, is directly loaned from Russian.  Chinese uses a calque (政治局; Zhèngzhìjú in pinyin), from which the Vietnamese (Bộ Chính trị), and Korean (정치국, 政治局 Jeongchiguk) terms derive.

1917 and after

The first politburo was Russian, created in 1917 by the Bolsheviks, the initial membership of seven including Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky and Stalin.  Although the USSR’s Politburo was notionally the highest policy-making government authority, it was usually subservient to the office of General Secretary of the Communist Party, especially during Comrade Stalin’s (1878–1953; leader of the Soviet Union 1922-1953) time.  In an example of the re-branding which happened often in the USSR, it was known as the Presidium between 1952 and 1966.  Many communist nations adopted the model during the twentieth century but politburos exist now only in the five remaining communist countries, China, the DPRK (North Korea), Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba.  Those five long outlasted the Russian original which was dissolved in 1991 after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Old white men: the Twenty-sixth Politburo (1981–1986) of the USSR (1981 press release).

The last four leaders of the USSR (Leonid Brezhnev (1964–1982), Yuri Andropov (1982-1984), Konstantin Chernenko (1984-1985) and Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991) all appear here.

Gulag

Gulag (pronounced goo-lahg)

(1) The system of forced-labor camps in the Soviet Union (with initial capital).

(2) Individually, a Soviet forced-labor camp (usually with initial capital).

(3) By association, any prison or detention camp, especially one used for political prisoners (usually not with initial capital).

(4) Figuratively, any place regarded as undesirable or one perceived as being a “punishment-post” (not with initial capital).

(5) Figuratively, any system used to silence dissent (not with initial capital).

1930-1931: From the Russian ГУЛА́Г (GULÁG, GULag or Gulág), the acronym (Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й (Glávnoje upravlénije ispravítelʹno-trudovýx lageréj) translated usually as “Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps” but also, inter alia, “Chief Administration of Corrective-Labor Camps”, “Main Directorate for Places of Detention”, “Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps” etc.).  The noun plural was Gulags.

An example of the way in which a bland acronym (like the 1933 Gestapo (an abbreviated form of the German Geheime Staatspolizei (the construct being Ge(heime) Sta(ats)po(lizei), literally “secret state police”) can become a byword for something awful, although technically, the acronym GULag (Glávnoje upravlénije ispravítelʹno-trudovýx lageréj (Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps)) didn’t come into use until 1930, the origin of what quickly would evolve into a vast, nation-wide network of concentration camps lies in the legal device created almost immediately after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917.  This was the concept of the “class enemy”, a logical crime to gazette under Marxist-Leninist theory and one that could be applied literally to anybody, regardless of their conduct; it was essentially the same idea as the crime of “unspecified offences” which appears in the judicial sentences of some authoritarian states.  Russia, as many of the Bolsheviks knew from personal experience, had a long tradition of “internal exile” and the new regime extended this concept, creating concentration camps for class enemies where convicts were required to perform useful manual labor (forestry, mining, quarrying etc).

The early camps, authorized by decree in April 1919, were the prisoner of war (POW) facilities which had become redundant after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918) which concluded hostilities between Russia and the Central Powers although the first model camp was in the White Sea region, in what were once the Orthodox Church's monastery buildings on the Solovetsky Islands and the first prisoners were anti-Bolsheviks, mostly left-wing intellectuals and members of the White Army.  The Cheka, the Russian secret police (the first in the alphabet soup of the names adopted (Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB, NKVD, SMERSH, MGB, (most famously) KGB & FSB), was allocated the role of administration.  Reflecting the love secret police everywhere have for mysterious acronyms, the Cheka created SLON (Northern Camps of Special Significance) as an administrative template for the Solovetsky Islands which, briefly, was the only camp complex in the Soviet state.  The number of concentration (usually described as “correctional labor”) camps grew sufficiently during the 1920s to outgrow the bureaucratic structures initially formed by the Cheka and in 1930 the GULag was created as a separate division of the secret police which worked in conjunction with the Soviet Ministry of the Interior overseeing the use of the physical labor of prisoners.  Although the camps were sometimes used for those guilty of “normal” criminal offences, the great majority of inmates were political prisoners who were sometimes genuine political dissidents but could be there for entirely arbitrary reasons or even as victims of personal vendettas.  In these aspects there are parallels with the Nazi's concentration camps which also worked as systems of coercion, punishment & repression although the GULag never had a programme industrially to exterminate an entire race.  There was another striking similarity in the camp architecture of the two dictatorships which were nominally ideological opponents.  The German equivalent of the GULag, the Konzentrationlager is remembered for the words Arbeit macht frei (work makes you free) rendered in wrought iron above the gates of Auschwitz I; the inscription через труд (through labor (ie get back home through working)) was the message at the prisoners' entrance to the Magaden camp in Siberia.      

What is sometime neglected in the history of the GULag (and other systems of concentration camps) is that while it is well-understood as part of a system of repression, there were genuine attempts to locate the camps in places where the labor extracted from the inmates could be applied to the maximum benefit for the state, something of great significance because in 1929 comrade Stalin (1878–1953; Soviet leader 1922–1953) announced a programme of rapid industrialization and the first of a succession of five-year plans. In support of this, the Politburo abolished any distinction between political and other crimes and intruded a unified network of camps to replace the hitherto dual prison system.  From this point, accelerating from the mid-1930s, archipelagos of camps were built (substantially by the prisoners) close to sites of huge economic projects such as a canal from the White Sea to the Baltic Sea, gold mining in Kolyma and lines of communications such as the Baikal-Amur Mainline.

The GULag’s second great growth spurt happened during Stalin’s “Great Terror” in 1936-1938 when the upper echelons of the Communist Party, the armed forces, the civil service and even the GULag management were subject to purges and while there were many executions, most were sent to the camps which, never designed for such numbers, were unable to handle the mass influx and the already high death rate increased sometimes threefold.  During comrade Stalin's great purges, the (whispered) joke was that the Russian population consisted of (1) those in the gulag, (2) those just released and (3) those about to go back.  On a somewhat smaller scale, rapid inflows also happened in the early years of World War II because of the need to imprison those deported from territory just occupied by the Soviet Union (Eastern Poland, the Baltics, Bessarabia) but this pressure on capacity was more than off-set by the sudden release of many prisoners to meet the needs of the Red Army which had suffered massive losses in the Nazi invasion.  Needing troops, all was suddenly forgiven and it wouldn’t be until 1945 that the numbers in the camps began again to trend upwards, reflecting the waves of arrests among the ranks of the Red Army, former German POWs and ethnic minorities, including Soviet Jews.  The Cold War also fed the GULag.  In 1948-1949, Stalin launched the construction of new megalomaniacal projects, including the Volga-Don Canal, new power stations, dams, and communications, among them the Dead Road and a tunnel and railway to Sakhalin Island, both of which, despite a horrific death-toll, proved impossible to build and were cancelled when Stalin died in 1953.

After Stalin’s death, an amnesty was announced for many of those serving sentences for criminal offences and almost all of those deemed to have committed “minor offences” were released although political prisoners remained imprisoned and it wasn’t until “the thaw” under Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) that widespread releases were ordered after almost four million political crime cases were reviewed and in 1957, as one of a number of reforms, the GULag was abolished and most of the camps shut down.  Khrushchev himself announced that the Soviet economy would no longer based on the slave labor of prisoners which, as a piece of economic analysis was true but while the numbers of political prisoners fell, they did not disappear although they tended now to be only imprisoned for genuine opposition to the regime, dispatched most frequently to labor camps in Mordovia or in camps clustered around the Urals. The conditions remained grim but the death rates were tiny compared to those suffered in Stalin’s time but what also disguised the extent of post-Stalinist repression was than many dissidents were technically not imprisoned but instead declared insane and incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals, many of which closely resembled prisons.  There, the “insane” were often subject to cruel & unusual “medical” procedures.

The number of people who passed through the GULag can never exactly be known but, using archival material which became accessible after the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, historians have estimated between 15-18 million were imprisoned and the death-toll may have been almost 10%, the overwhelming majority of whom were from Russia or the constituent republics of the USSR but others were foreigners, mostly Czechoslovaks, Poles, Hungarians & Frenchmen.  The network of camps dotted around the USSR consisted of almost 500 administrative centres, each running as few as dozens or as many as hundreds of individual camps, historians having documented just under 30,000.  In the West the term GULag became widely known only after the publication in 1973 Russian of novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's (1918–2008) three-volume The Gulag Archipelago, described by the author as "An Experiment in Literary Investigation" which he wrote between 1958-1968, using documentary sources including legal papers, interviews, diaries, statements and his personal experience as a GULag prisoner.

Map of the GULag camp distribution, Plain Talk magazine, 1950.

However, both the system of slavery and the word “GULag” had, during comrade Stalin’s time, been publicized in the West, remarkably accurate maps published in 1950 in the US in Plain Talk (A US anti-communist monthly magazine, 1946–1950) magazine but, despite it being the high Cold War, the revelations didn’t resonate in public consciousness as they would a generation later when Solzhenitsyn released The Gulag Archipelago.